They say it was a beautiful spring day. What did I do on April 26, 1986? Since it was a Saturday, I must have gone to school in the morning (we used to have school on Saturdays) and then had a weekend to enjoy. I was 12 years old and did not worry about too many things.

But the following weeks and months became the one of the most sad and scary memories of my childhood. Latvia does not border Ukraine but we are not far. People had no idea that 1000 km away we just had the worst nuclear accident in history. A product of severely flawed Soviet-era reactor design combined with human error.Nobody was telling us, the citizens of USSR, anything. Only few days later the first official news started coming through.

Everyone was shocked and worried. I started hearing words like “terrible accident, Ukraine, nuclear plant, Chernobyl, radiation, radioactive cloud, radioactive rain, polluted environment, tragedy, emergency, victims…” There was lots of fear and frustration because the official news in the media was so censored and even false that people did not believe it. Everyone realized it must be much worse than the official version. People were also angry but felt powerless.

One of my friends who grew up in Ukraine, still gets very emotional when she speaks about those events. The annual parade in Kiev on May 1, the Worker’s Day, did not get cancelled. Even though the authorities knew what had happened and how the radiation had spread. Chernobyl is only 135 km (88 miles) from Kiev and thousands of children and youth and adults were parading through the city streets, singing, holding signs of Soviet leaders while everything was covered in invisible radioactive dust.

In childhood I had heard so much about the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that I had horrible pictures of Chernobyl in my mind. Only much later we saw some images of the actual blown-up reactor. I had never thought about radioactive clouds but the wind blows where it wants and it blew the poisonous particles across large part of Eastern and Northern Europe. I remember being told not to pick wild mushrooms and berries in the woods.

But the greatest fear was very personal. There was a massive forced mobilization of men into military service to go and contain the contamination and clean up the area. Especially young men with construction skills (the average age of those later called “liquidators” was between 30-40) and my dad worked in construction. Mom was indignant at the thought and I was scared and dad must have been worried. I don’t know how aware were my younger brothers. Eventually he was not mobilized. I have never asked but most likely he was exempt because of family and three young children.

I know other men, though, who were forced to go. My stepdad was one of those ‘unlucky’ ones. He had tried to avoid it but the Soviet army truck drove up to their home and soldiers loaded the “unwilling ones” in. They had to take off their civilian clothes and put on uniforms and travel to Ukraine. He spent 6 months in the worst affected region not so far from the epicenter. Since this clean-up crew was now ‘officially’ in the army, they were guarded by other soldiers to make sure people did not desert. And their ‘protective gear’ was rubber gloves and simple face mask.

My stepdad has already passed away from cancer. Not doubt his health and peace of heart were destroyed by the Chernobyl. Nobody knows the actual number of immediate victims and those who died later. The numbers are big and they vary but it is not about the numbers. What we remember is an overwhelming tragedy, people’s sacrifice and bravery and also terrible injustice.

Therefore I can never place April 26, 1986 in the spring. In my subconscious mind it is a very dark dark time.

Liquidator pushes a baby in a carriage who was found during the cleanup of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, 1986